On the Road with Bob Dylan

by Larry Sloman

  “Incredible ensemble playing,” Ratso gushes, “like on ‘Never Say Goodbye’ …”

  “But if it doesn’t have the complex lyrics then it doesn’t even get to the point where it’s worth acknowledging, it’s like that on Bob’s records and I can see why he doesn’t want to go to a lot of trouble. It wouldn’t matter if he had Booker T and the MG’s and the New York Symphony Orchestra playing, people still wouldn’t hardly notice it, they’d be concerned whether they can hear that line and they’re not interested in accepting him on a musical level, his phrasing, his singing, his effect, his drama.”

  “Do you think that the Rolling Thunder Revue was a reaction to Tour ’74?” Ratso has saved this question for last. “It seemed that Bob was so uptight …”

  “Oh, I don’t know if they had anything to do with one another,” Robbie shoots back, a bit defensively. “And if they did …”

  “C’mon,” Ratso again, “he seemed stilted on that tour. I almost felt that this tour was like a response to the impersonality of that thing.”

  “On Tour ’74?” Robbie’s incredulous. “I don’t think he was particularly uptight, other than the fact that he hadn’t done a tour in eight years! There was a kind of pressure to the thing ….”

  “Right,” Ratso jumps in, “and the Rolling Thunder thing in some respects seems to have taken that pressure off him, the whole revue format. It’s not like DYLAN/BAND with all the burdens on his shoulders.”

  “Yeah, but that’s what a tour is,” Robbie laughs. “I mean, when the Rolling Stones go on tour that’s what it is. You can either accept it as being a very nerve-racking operation or you can say that I’ve done this a lot of times before and we’re just gonna make the best of it. Tour ’74 was hard work, just the intensity of the music was so high that it was really straining. Whenever Bob sings with the Band he wants to get an energy level out of it, or I don’t know, not necessarily wants to but he does, end up singing things and it’s like Thunder and Mountains,” Robbie makes some expansive gestures, “you know, screaming at the gods in the sky and everything is so high-pitched, such intensity and energy. I mean, we can certainly do that but we can do a bunch of other things too, and we didn’t get to that. I think that his anticipation and nervousness on that tour didn’t allow for any laid-back stuff and we do lots of that. We didn’t do any of that on Tour ’74, it was really like a train going by and I missed that, all those different moods. On the Rolling Thunder I heard more of that and I like that. So that’s what the relaxation allows you to do. Rolling Thunder was extraordinary, everyone told me they had a really good time and it was loose and it was fun and it was nice to do something without having a gun at the back of your head.”

  Ratso thanks Robbie and scoots back downstairs, goes home, and puts on Planet Waves for three hours. The next day he cabs it back uptown to the hotel. The crew, the film crew, the security men, most of the tour has gone but the performers are finding it difficult to leave. Only Baez has escaped without much trouble, but Mitchell, Neuwirth, Elliot, Blakley, Soles, T-Bone, even Dylan himself, they all seem to want to linger around and keep the thing going, if only in spirit.

  So in the spirit of Plymouth or New Haven or Montreal, Ratso meets Soles up in Joni’s room. Today finally is getaway day but they seem to be having trouble packing. Steven is sitting on the floor noodling on an acoustic guitar, while Joni sprawls across the unmade bed, engrossed in a review of her new album in the Village Voice. “Ooh,” she says, “this is a great line, ‘The Hissing of Summer Lawns sounds to me like a towering igloo of artistic conceit,’ that’s a good line.” Joni cracks up, as the phone interrupts.

  After the call, the reporter plays social director, running down a list of favorite cheap restaurants of every conceivable ethnic stripe, proposing music clubs, after-hours clubs, in short a full night of entertainment if the performers should decide to linger one more day.

  “This is really your town, huh?” Soles admires.

  “I think everywhere is Slocum’s town,” Joni laughs. “He’s got every phone number down of every hotel. It’s like that joke, picture this, there’s a huge crowd, two million people in front of the Vatican, and I’m in the audience with Steve and Steve says, ‘Look!’ and points up to the balcony. And I say, ‘Yeah, but who’s that guy up there with Slocum.’”

  “I just got Lisa’s poem,” Joni yawns, searching through the paper debris on her bed for the poem in question. “I skimmed through it and I don’t know what her trip is, whether she’s a terrible masochist or if she gets something out of it, but it’s like very disturbed.”

  Just then the phone rings and it’s a call for Ratso, this one from George Lois. They do a postmortem on the concert and reviews, Lois particularly thrilled that the Daily News, “the enemy,” gave the center spread to the concert. In the background, Joni borrows Soles’ guitar just before he leaves and starts into “Coyote.”

  “Joni, sing,” Ratso holds the receiver aloft, “sing so Lois knows it’s you.”

  She shakes her head.

  “She won’t sing,” Ratso reports, then holds the receiver near the guitar again. “You’re his wife’s favorite singer. While you were playing at the Garden, George was talking and she told him to shut up.”

  “There’s something in there for him too,” Joni snaps. “Look Ratso, I’m starting to get angry now.”

  “He’s a sincere guy,” the reporter pleads, “he spent his own fucking money on Rubin. There’s no guile in him.”

  Joni starts singing in a low, hauntingly beautiful voice and Ratso gives Lois a hurried good-bye and listens to the words.

  Every picture has its shadows

  And it has some source of light

  I’m talking about blindness and sight

  The perils of benefactors

  And the blessings of parasites

  That’s what I’m talking about, Ratso’s blindness and sight

  Threatened by all things

  By the devil of cruelty

  And we’re drawn to all things

  By the devil of delight

  Mythical devil of the ever-present laws

  Pertaining to everyone’s blindness and sight

  Joni pauses, then breaks into a long introduction, finally starting into “In France They Kiss on Main Street,” the opening song on the Hissing of Summer Lawns album. Ratso sits enthralled, really hearing the songs for the first time, unfettered by the large halls, the noisy crowds, and the temptations of the arenas.

  “Great,” he whistles at the end. “Next time in Boston, I’ll take you to the Combat Zone, they’re great people down there.”

  “Here’s one they’d like.” Joni smiles and does “Edith and the Kingpin,” Ratso marveling at the lyric, which he was never able to discern during the tour.

  “That’s a nice one,” he admits. “Do ‘Coyote.’ I want to hear the whole song.”

  “I only had two verses then in that cafe in Quebec,” Joni smiles sheepishly, “that’s why I kept repeating it. I was writing it still, so every time I played it I changed it.”

  “Is it done?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “You’re still gonna add shit to it, huh, there are more coyotes on the road, in different cities …”

  “… and I collect their pelts,” Joni picks up the line and runs with it, “the coyotes in different cities I sing in, and nail ’em up in my shack in Canada on the wall.”

  “And I bring ’em when I come to the hall,” Ratso sings.

  “I show them and exhibit them when I come to the hall,” Joni embellishes, “shameless hussy that I am.” They both laugh, and Joni starts strumming the hypnotic, driving beat of the song, then she starts to sing.

  I’ll collect their pelts

  And I’ll tack them upon the wall

  In my cabin in Canada

  And I bring ’em to exhibit ’em in the hall

  Shameless hussy that I am

  The most shameless of them all

  “That�
��s the end of the song,” Ratso screams just as Joni starts:

  No regrets coyote

  We just come from such different sets of circumstances

  I’m up all night in the studios and you’re up early on the ranch

  You’ll be brushing out a brood mare’s tail

  While the sun is ascending and I’ll just be getting home

  There’s no comprehending just how close to the bone and the skin

  And the eyes and the lips and still feel so alone

  Still remain related like stations in some relay

  You just picked up a hitchhiker

  A prisoner of white lines on the freeway

  I saw a farmhouse burning down in the middle of nowhere

  In the middle of the night

  And pulled right past that tragedy

  Till we pulled into some roadhouse lights

  And a local band was playing there

  And the locals were up shaking and kicking on the floor

  And the next thing I know the coyote’s at my door

  He pins me in the corner and he won’t take no

  He drags me out on the dance floor and we’re dancing close and slow

  He’s got a woman at home, he’s got a woman for the night

  Now he wants one for the day, why did you have to lead me on that way?

  Just picked up a hitchhiker

  A prisoner of white lines on the freeway

  I looked a coyote right in the face

  On the road to Baljennie near my old home town

  He went running through the whisker wheat

  Chasing some prize down

  And a hawk was playing with him, coyote was jumping up and making passes

  He has those same eyes just like yours under your dark glasses

  Privately probing the public halls

  Peeking through the keyholes in numbered doors

  Where the players lick their wounds and take their temporary lovers

  And their pills and their powders to get them through this passion play

  No regrets Coyote

  I’ll just get off up the way

  You just picked up a hitchhiker

  A prisoner of white lines on the freeway

  Coyote’s in the coffee shop and he’s staring a hole in his scrambled eggs,

  He picks up my scent on his fingers while he’s watching the waitresses’ legs

  He’s too far from the Bay of Thunder, from Appaloosas and Eagles and the ten-mile tide

  The air-conditioned cubicles and the carbon ribbon rides

  Spelling it out so clearly, either he’s gonna have to stand and fight

  Or take off outa here

  I tried to run away myself,

  I tried to run and hide the trouble with my ego and with my playing

  Just picked up a hitchhiker

  A prisoner of white lines of the highway

  I’m gonna take your pelt coyote

  Nail it on the wall of my house in Canada

  Drag it into the arena, tell them all about you

  ’Cause I’m a shameless hussy

  I’m the most shameless of them all

  But I can live, I can really love

  And I don’t need applause but I do need love

  A huge smile sweeps across Ratso’s face as Joni starts to improvise on the spot.

  I’m way out in the front lines

  And they said I wasn’t too electrifying

  They said I was kinda ordinary

  And they didn’t hear one line

  Except for a few sensitives

  Straining to hear it through the tacky sound

  But I’ll be around

  ’Cause I’m fucking good

  Joni’s screaming now, Ratso’s encouraging her with whoops and yelps of his own:

  I’m fucking good

  I’m not just a writer for woman, oh no!

  I’m a writer of common human feelings

  Subtle human feelings

  Complicated human feelings.

  “And you’re number five with a bullet,” Ratso shouts.

  I’m number five with a bullet!

  I’m the champion of this song.

  Joni collapses the song with laughter. “You knew what I was saying that day,” Ratso smiles, “you just blew it all out of proportion. I was just saying that I got different eyes.”

  “And I was saying don’t come around me until you widen your scope a little,” Joni bites her lip, “‘cause I can tell now as you hear the lines there’s more than one good song here and you really didn’t know that …. I’m getting so low energy all of a sudden.” Joni holds her hand to her head, and collapses on the bed. “I feel like I’ve absorbed so much, being in the middle of a human experiment, and I’ve absorbed so much information, I haven’t had time to sort it out yet.”

  “We oughta get Roger in here to sing,” Ratso says cheerily.

  “C’mon,” Joni frowns, “let’s not have a party. What did you notice about the prison show?” Joni turns reporter.

  “That Dylan sang like he never sang before,” Ratso shoots back. “He never sang ‘Hattie Carroll’ like that to honkies. That song’s like a prototype for the Rubin song. You know, I told him to recut the album, and he said it was a question of time. I told him to add Robbie, Ronson, even Ginsberg for karma. Did you hear the new words he added to ‘Simple Twist of Fate’?”

  “What are the new words?” Joni sits up on the bed.

  “I don’t know, he made it more Levyesque, more narrative. He changed ‘that emptiness inside’ line to ‘picked up a note.’ I hate that change.”

  “I heard that change, it’s superficial,” Joni agrees.

  “Did you ever hear the change he made in ‘If You See Her Say Hello’? He changed ‘if you’re making love to her’ to ‘if you get close to her,’” Ratso shakes his head.

  “He’s gutless a lot of times,” Joni chides.

  “C’mon,” Ratso yells, “in ‘Sara’ he comes out with that Chelsea Hotel stanza, that’s not gutless, that’s the guts pouring out of him. ‘Hurricane’ isn’t gutless. You know that whole story, he came back from France, where he was hiding out from all the assholes that hit on him here. He can’t speak a fucking word of French, you saw that in Quebec. He couldn’t talk to the audience. They hated him there.”

  “They didn’t hate him,” Joni calls out Ratso’s exaggeration.

  “Yeah, but it was lukewarm in Quebec,” he backtracks.

  “But that’s a provincial town,” Joni flashes, “what did you expect? You have to take that into consideration, that’s the subtlety of performing and of life and if you get hurt because you don’t get enough applause like in a certain situation—”

  “How’d you feel at the prison?” Ratso jumps in, “the audience booing, and screaming and catcalling at you and shit.”

  “I loved it,” Joni leaps up and starts to pace the room, “I loved the prison, I loved the confrontation in the third verse of ‘Coyote.’ I said to that chick who told me to get off, I said, You want me to get off? Well, I’m not getting off because my best verse is coming. We came here to give you pleasure, if you can’t take it from us that’s your problem not ours.’ I enjoyed getting feisty and I enjoyed the people at the end. At the end, that guy said, ‘C’mon down and dance with me,’ and he was in for like seven years on a homicide charge. He had like an eighteen-year sentence. He was a good cat. He didn’t have nearly as much jive as Hurricane.”

  Joni retreats to a chair and curls up, her face turning sour. “Hurricane was so jive. He was like shaking hands with one person and looking toward the next one that was coming to greet him like David Geffen or someone and the only song he listened to the whole show was the song for him. He talked through that whole show. I got no respect for that cat. He’s a phony, he comes on like a spiritually enlightened cat and he’s not. That’s bullshit. And I told that cat Wayne, his friend, I saw him at the party that last night and he asked if I wanted to send
word back to Hurricane. So I told him, ‘Yeah, tell him I think he’s really an egomaniac, man, if he can’t give respect to other performers. Let him use some of his karmic pseudospirituality to cool the audience out if he’s so powerful. He’s not; he’s a fake. He’s an innocent man but he’s a fake. I got no respect for him.’”

  Ratso falls silent, half agreeing with the singer.

  “And that whole political thing at the Garden show,” Joni flares, “I hated that show, that whole show was bullshit. Even that line, that man in that hell, that’s no hell, he may have had trouble but you carry your own hell around with you. You can be in hell in a mansion, in the streets or anywhere. I talked to kids that were in there that were in better shape for their experience, so it was like romantic politics. The whole thing makes me puke.”

  “Ali was bullshit,” Ratso admits. “He left the minute he was through, with his contingent.”

  “What’s the difference between a singer standing up and talking about the prison that people are all in as they walk through the streets and so-called freedom,” Joni gropes for the phrase, “the prisoners of spirit …”

  “Yeah I know, I know,” Ratso pooh-poohs. “Are the birds free from the chains of the skyway?”

  “Let’s not get poetic about it,” Joni shoots back, “but what about that? To me that’s just as heavy, but politics always … Nietzsche said something in Thus Spake Zarathustra, something like ‘around the great actors, circulate the people. What do they know of subtlety with their forty-two thoughts and none of them original?’ Today I feel contemptuous. That’s one of the feelings that I intend to experience, my contempt.”